


A shoulder to cry on

by ElectraRhodes



Series: Just one shot.. [6]
Category: Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Additional scenes, Canon Compliant, First Kiss, In canon chronological order, M/M, Multi, Ouch, alternating pov, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 15:39:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8850574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElectraRhodes/pseuds/ElectraRhodes
Summary: Five episodes in the Hannibal universe, spoilers for each season. Ch 2 is the prequel to 'Let us then try what love will do' a two chapter piece written from Beverly Katz's point of view, which is both sad and somehow full of courage.





	1. Before..

**Author's Note:**

> Five times Will's shoulder took the hit, and one time it didn't.

Just once Will wished he could pull the fucking trigger. He was fine on the range and even on training exercises. But put him out in the field, whilst he could get the gun out, point it in the right direction, he couldn't pull the trigger. 

Usually there was back up, usually it was enough to just point it, usually even the most unreasonable of perps backed down when they saw a cop with a gun, pointing it at them.

Not this time. God it hurt so much. The tweaker had stabbed him. Sure his partner shot the stupid sod, but not before he'd lunged at a Will and got him in the shoulder, with what? A stupid fucking fork. Will was on the ground now, sweating through the pain, his partner cuffing the swearing mess of a perp. 

In the back of the ambulance, called for the prisoner though now treating him, the paramedic eased the fork out. He did that complicated sucking noise with his teeth which usually indicated an expensive car fix or plumbing rescue, and now probably meant it was a mess. 'Ok, we'll clean this up. It's got some spaghetti sauce in it, sorry, it looks like it was stuck in a meat ball or something, before you that is'. Will closed his eyes. 

His shoulder really throbbed all the way to the hospital, at the hospital, back home, back at the precinct when he was subject to some laughter as well as a bollocking from the lieutenant (why is it funny if it's a fork he griped), every time he went back to the range, even when he wrote his resignation letter two months down the line when he realised he was done. It really hurt.


	2. It's not the rotator cuff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beverly endeavours to help Will, who is a bit sad all round really...
> 
>  
> 
> This chapter also serves as a prologue to the two parter from Beverly Katz's point of view called 'Let us then see what love will do'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The time Will's shoulder isn't really the problem

Beverly is smart. Smarter than almost anyone else in the room, almost any room, almost all the time. She's also pretty nice. Not one to mince words or truths, but still nice. She loves her team mates, the idiots, with a fond and fierce love. She knows about loyalty and care and compassion. She shows it in all kinds of ways.

Will is a sweet twitchy mess. The team all like him but they can tell he is one sandwich short of a picnic. Never the less Jack has brought him in, so he's part of the team, and so that's it for Beverly. He gets her love and compassion, and loyalty, and support. Even if he doesn't know how to ask for it, even if he never can. It's his. Later on, much later on, she'll give it to him, more than anyone else, ever. She'll really show what devotion, and unstinting, unswerving love is all about.

Beverly, Jimmy and Zeller know that Will is on his way back to the lab. He shot Garrett Jacob Hobbs just three days ago. He's been signed off to come back in by his new psychiatrist (who the team either love/loathe just depending on his suit and tie combo) but he's got to go back to the range to get his gun back. They've bought him a cupcake and made a little welcome back card, not too over the top but friendly. The card has a picture of a cartoon gun on it going 'pop'. If only.

When Will gets back he can hardly bring himself to look at them. They make him eat the cupcake. They josh him. Jimmy cleans his glasses better. Zeller has brought him some special shampoo that gets even the worst crimes scene stuff out of his hair (it actually smells ok too), Beverly has bought him a new holster. They force Will to come to their local after work and buy him bad beer, and then drive him home. Beverly holds his hair back whilst he pukes the bad beer in a ditch at the side of the road. He apologises. Beverly doesn't care, he wasn't sick in the car! 

Three days later Will is having his third go at the gun re-training and test. He's still a mess. But he's a mess with friends, just maybe. At least one. Beverley comes and shifts his stance and hold a little, he tells her about the stupid shoulder injury. He grumbles and is a bit rude. She just adjusts him again to take the strain off of it. He gets better. She commends his efforts. Will straightens up a bit. Fifth time around he gets his gun back. 

As they go back to the lab, Bev puts her hand on his shoulder, the bad one. 'Sometimes, it's ok to lean on others for a bit, you can you know, with me'. Will has no words. He's never really believed that there are others in his life he can depend on. But maybe, just maybe, here and now at this point in time he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is such a touching scene between Mr Twitchy personified and Ms Cool for Katz and I love her, could Mr Fuller maybe do a whole shadow story where we just get team sassy science doing their thing in a kind of rom com with everyone else guesting regularly? I'd watch that. Defo.


	3. Kitchen confidential

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal is Hannibal, and Jack is taken in. Will's shoulder is really fed up.

He's lying on the floor in the corner of the kitchen propped up by the base cabinets. He clutches at his shoulder. Internally he's screaming 'not again, not again'. His gun is somewhere on the floor. As he looks up he realises this is the exact same position Garrett Jacob Hobbs was in as he bled out on the floor. This time Jack is standing where he was, and Hannibal is standing in the same place all over again. Fuck it. He can really sodding 'see' now. 

Actually it's not Hannibal he sees it's the wendigo. He'd thought his earlier hallucinations were bad enough, Hobbs, the weird stag, the noises and voices, the other un-named creatures chittering on the edges of his vision and consciousness. But the wendigo is something fearful and feral. And he is afraid. Really and truly afraid, of what, he can't remember, and of what he does.

And Jack has shot him. In the shoulder. Of course it's meant to be in the shoulder, it's a disabling shot. A. Disabling. Shot. He's crying now. For the pain in his shoulder, for Abigail, for himself, for his mind skittering away, for his friendship with Hannibal - ha, what a bare bit of scorched earth that is, for his friendship with Jack, all, he grimaces at the thought, all shot to pieces.

Like his fucking shoulder. Again.


	4. I love Paris in the Spring time, except this is Florence and it's raining.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chiyoh loves Hannibal. Last time she saw Will she pushed him off a train. It's not much better this time around.

It is simply extraordinary to see him here. His lovely boy. All curls and bruises, and smiles and stubble. Delicious. A treat. Hannibal is delighted at the way the tea-cup is re-gathering itself. Maybe all shall be well this time around.

They pass though the corridors of the Uffizi gallery. In the courtyard, there is a small concert going on, Palestrina. They pause at the edge of the appreciative audience. The last time Hannibal played this piece Will had shared the delicate painted bench that matched the harpsichord, sitting right on the edge, towards the end he had leant against Hannibal. Sweet notes between them plucked from the heart of the instrument.

When Hannibal finished playing the piece, Will had kissed him. It had been soft, and quiet, and promising. It had filled his heart to the brim. It was partly the memory of this moment that had enraged Hannibal when he had scented Freddie Lounds on Will, just before... but no, Will is here right now, they have offered forgiveness, 'let us now see what love will do' he thinks.

As the piece finishes this time Will turns to Hannibal and brushes his lips over his cheek. Will isn't normally tactile or demonstrative so maybe it presages some change of heart and mind. Hannibal smiles at him fondly. They limp out of the gallery's precincts together. Hannibal hopes and maybe Will does too, that it means really together at last. For a moment Hannibal thinks of another curly haired man and Paris. They could go there together, he and Will, next Spring.

But for now it's Florence and it's raining. As they walk across the cobbles a semi silenced shot rings out and Will is on the stones clutching at his shoulder. Hannibal drops down to him. Will is all gritted teeth and snarls. 'Fuckin Chiyoh this time. Why? God it hurts. Again'. Hannibal is astonished. He looks up, scanning the nearby buildings at the skyline. He just makes out the retreating figure of his own coat clad avenging angel. 

Hannibal half carries and half walks Will back to his and Bedelia's apartment. Will is sweating from the pain. Hannibal is still astonished by the turn of events. Once inside he collects a bowl of hot water and some clean cloths. Chiyoh emerges from the shadows in the kitchen. 'He had a knife. He pulled it out of his pocket'. Hannibal looks at her sharply and his own heart goes cold. Ahh. Not so much forgiven then after all. 

Hannibal returns to Will and tidily removes the temptation. 'You dropped your forgiveness Will'. Will wants to explain that it wasn't meant for Hannibal, at least, not in that way. It's the knife Hannibal used on him. He's bringing it back as an offering. A symbol. But Hannibal isn't used to being wrong. He think he knows Will inside out. He forgets that he can never quite predict Will. And with the malice of Bedelia still curling around his mind, he switches to a different kind of consummation than he'd envisaged just half an hour ago in the gallery, in front of the wonderful Primavera. 

Hannibal holds Will, just one final time. He injects him in the shoulder. The bullet must come out. It's already a mess of scar tissue. He was shot there before, and stabbed by the look of it. His messy, lovely, broken, treacherous boy. Will tries to tell him something. But Hannibal isn't listening now, just holding him, by the shoulder, until all feeling passes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What was the knife really for? Hannibal thinks it's Wills forgiveness, but we never get to really find out from Will if that's just so..


	5. Songs of Experience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every night and every morn, some to misery are born,  
> Every morn and every night, some are born to sweet delight.  
> Some are born to sweet delight, and some are born to endless night.
> 
> Endless Night  
> William Blake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final time Will's shoulder takes one for the team.

They are all flame and radiance. They are Michael vanquishing the devil, George slaying the dragon, Beowulf destroying Grendel. Like all golden Grimm fairy tales they have vanquished the monster, not by killing alone but by becoming more than. A transformation, a metamorphosis.

They are alight in the darkness. And it is all black now. 

Hannibal feels the pull in his belly where the bullet went through. He must attend to that soon, the adrenaline of their transformation will only take him so far. Will is bleeding freely from his cheek and there is a spreading stain across his chest too, only visible because of the contrast with his shirt.

They clutch one another. A bonfire of vanities, the pretences and hypocrisies of the world shrivelling on their fire, congregated together. Panting, holding, breathing.

Falling. Falling. A grand gesture for the camera. An obscura. Falling...

But not far.

There is, after all, a ledge. They fall, only ten feet or so. So they lie there winded and wait. The camera that Francis set running has probably five more minutes of run time. They won't go back up until it's passed. Chiyoh will be coming in less than half an hour. There's a slightly shady doctor with her just in case. And as it turns out this is a just in case scenario. Will thinks grimly that Hannibal will be smug about being right yet again, even if this time it was him lying bleeding on the floor, and just for once not Will. How is this even his life that he both notices this and is slightly sorry about it? He doesn't like seeing Hannibal brought low. 

That's what got him into this particular version of their recurring mess in the first place. Hannibal brought low by the indignities of the BSHCI. If it had looked even an iota better or Hannibal had been smugger this wouldn't be happening now. But seeing Hannibal reduced had been Will's undoing, just as Hannibal had always wanted rather to be his becoming. That, and the temptations of myth, fairy tale and legend. Maybe Will wanted his own, their own happy ending? Will suspected that Hannibal would make some innocent comment about that all laden with meaning and innuendo and ... but they need to get out of this first.

He grimaces as he shifts around to pull Hannibal up into a sitting position. His side is a mess, though it looks like the bullet passed through. Maybe that's a good thing Will thinks? He doesn't know. Hannibal is conscious though and does know about these things, he directs Will to help him remove their shirts and then makes two pressure pads with Will's help. They fix them in place, one to the front and one to the back, tying a shirt round using the arms knotted together, followed by Will's belt to strap the improvised bandaging tight. It's not nearly good enough but it'll hold until they get to the shed, and the doctor with his IV lines and blood bags and other useful things arrives. 

Hannibal is eyeing his face, the blood there has slowed to an ooze, Will tears his undershirt into strips and makes a pad for it, Hannibal has to fix it because Will can barely lift his arm. Now he's sure he looks like some kind of pirate. But he doesn't laugh about it. He's probably worse than a pirate. And what's going on with his arm?

Together they drag themselves up the short cliff path and back to a large shed on the edge of the property. Here the interior is smarter than the exterior. It's clean, and there are medical supplies, and their ready to go bags. And both electricity and water. They both remove their ruined clothing, down to towels and the make shift bandaging. Neither of them are a pretty sight. And when Chiyoh arrives with the doctor in train it gets both grimmer and messier for a while. 

Several hours later, they are anaesthetised, cleaned, stitched, intubated with fluids, painkillers, antibiotics and what ever else goes in those googly bags. They are ready to be moved, it would be better not to, but they need to leave as soon as possible. The doctor is returned to his house. Will is mildly surprised that they are leaving him alive but decides to say nothing. Chiyoh drives them into the night, Hannibal is laid out on the back seat and Will is reclining in the front passenger seat. No one is saying much. Everyone is tired or wired or both. It's been an epic evening. 

Just as Will is beginning to nod off he hears Hannibal ask 'Will, the stab wound? How is your shoulder?' 'Hurts' ... 'again'. Like he thought before, how is this even his life?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure you know that Blake illustrated both Dante and the Book of Revelation. Both extraordinary, metaphysical works of incredible beauty. Blake wrote poetry, painted, wrote prose, engraved and was a well known political radical of his time. He's like the British equivalent of Bosch, Erasmus, Copernicus, Leonardo, and maybe Goethe all in one. Go Billy boy.

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the 'just one shot' series - I feel for that shoulder, I really do. It should have its own wing at some hospital, it's travelled internationally even. I feel it should maybe get separate billing in the credits.


End file.
